Four Wheel Drive on My Wagon!

Four Wheel Drive on My Wagon!

And I’m still rolling along –
The Cherokees are chasing me
Arrows fly
Right on by
But I’m singing a happy song!

Big Bertha broke down on a ripio (corrugated) road in Argentina in July 2024 and having made a temporary repair, we toured northern Argentina waiting for replacement parts to come from Germany. Six weeks after our order, they were finally ready for collection from Calama in northern Chile. So we retraced our steps over the magnificent Jama Pass back into Chile, collected our parts from the courier in Calama and took them to MAN for assembly.

The first thing we did was to drain the oil and check for any metal material in the oil or on the sump plug magnet. Luckily it was all clear; meaning we hadn’t damaged our transfer case internals. This was a huge relief. After this, we removed the temporary repair and proceeded to assemble the new bearing cap. This involved pressing in the new bearing, assembling the front wheel drive selector, incorporating it into the bearing cap and pressing in the flange. We then installed it onto the transfer case and reattached the front propshaft.

The video below explains why my transfer case failed. It remains a mystery how the front wheel drive selector came to be wrongly assembled. Was it built wrongly by MAN during manufacture or was it wrongly reassembled during maintenance? We shall never know. But to the person responsible, I say “May your shoes always be one size too small”.

Many thanks to Luis and crew at MAN Calama for the repairs, Andres at MAN Santiago for organising the parts from Germany, Hans Peter at MAN Santiago for helping with technical documents, Stuart at MAN Exeter for providing parts numbers and Matt at MAN Exeter for technical advice.